Oppo Reno 2 review: a beautiful endurance runner

Oppo Reno 2 release date and price

Oppo arrived some time ago in Europe. Accordingly, the Oppo Reno 2 can also be purchased officially in many European countries. Also, our LTE bands, including the infamous band 20 (800 MHz), are supported by the devices for the European market and Android can be set up in languages commonly used here.

The Oppo Reno 2 is available in two memory variants, with 128 or 256GB of storage. We used the 256GB one for this test in "Shining Black", a dark blue color. There is also the lighter color variant called "Sea Blue".

The price of about £400 is quite reasonable. But we must not forget that Oppo does not give the Reno 2 Qualcomm's best chipset, but only a weaker variant from the 700 series. The better equipped Xiaomi Mi 9T Pro is now available for the same money.

Oppo Reno 2 design and build quality

The Oppo Reno 2 is a feast for the eyes, especially as it is actually just an upper mid-range smartphone. The design delivers some beautiful details, which together leave a lasting positive impression.

This starts with the smooth feel, which is achieved by the aluminum frame and the Gorilla Glass 6 perfectly joined at the front and back. On the back, the "Oppo" logo and the lettering "Designed for Reno" neon-blue and brightly framed. The reflections create a play of light that one would never expect from objects that have become so conventional as a smartphone.

Shortly after unpacking, however, most of you will want to use the protective cover. After all, the pleasure of the smooth design is quickly lost when the glass cracks. The included protective cover is also the most beautiful free package insert that I have received so far. The massive and yet haptically appealing fake leather design, unfortunately, covers a large part of the pretty trim (pictured above), but looks much better than the transparent silicone sleeves of many other smartphone manufacturers.

The design highlight, as seen in various smartphones this season, is the pop-up camera. With the Reno 2, Oppo decided on the shark fin design again. In this case, the camera rotates out of the upper edge of the housing. The process generates a quiet engine noise and takes place so quickly that Face Unlock does not take any longer than with statically installed selfie cameras.

The only shortcoming in the design of the Reno2 is perhaps the lack of IP certification. We do not know to what extent the manufacturer has nevertheless installed protective measures against penetrating dirt and moisture.

Oppo Reno 2 display

The display of the Oppo  Reno 2 has been designed to be completely borderless just like the predecessor. The 6.5-inch display comes in a 20:9 format and has a resolution of 2,400 x 1,080 pixels or 401 DPI. The AMOLED display emits up to 500 candelas against daylight, which is sufficient in most places even on sunny days.

The image output can be adjusted by numerous software settings:

• Quasi step-less control of color temperature
• Font and display size
• "Night protection."
  • Blue filters
  • Black-and-white mode
  • Read mode: white text on black background

You can activate an Always-on display. However, this will only display the date and time, but not notifications.

The fingerprint sensor is integrated behind the glass. It works with similar precision and speed as conventional models.

Oppo Reno 2 software

Oppo uses the ColorOS Android interface for its devices. Our test device had version ColorOS 6.1 based on Android 9 with the security patch from August 05, 2019. Special features of the software interface are:

• App encryption
• Children's area
• Private safe (hidden file folder)
• App Cloner
• Game space

So you can hide apps or files, install two parallel versions of WhatsApp or optimize for games. Oppo also incorporates several important Android standard features, such as Digital Wellbeing and Parental Controls, and eliminates others, including user-profiles and seamless system updates.

After all, Oppo has adapted to the Android standard and now offers an app drawer. Older versions distributed all app icons in an iPhone style on the start screens - much to the displeasure of order-loving users. It's nicer if we can choose between both versions - with or without an app drawer - without an additional app.

Speaking of choices: for navigating through the apps you can decide whether you want to have one, two or three buttons at the bottom and how they should be arranged. If you decide to go for gesture navigation, you have the choice of whether the back gesture should be designed in Google Pixel or iPhone X style.

Only a few apps pre-installed

Oppo preinstalls only two apps: Soloop is a video editing app that lets you create TicToc-style short videos. Game Space is like Samsung's Game Mode, which adjusts processor performance and notifications while playing. In addition, a menu floats permanently at the level of the power button, allowing you to quickly start important apps such as a phone or camera from anywhere.

Oppo Reno 2 performance

Oppo uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 730G in the Reno2. The chipset is manufactured with an eight-nanometer process and has been optimized in terms of efficiency and gaming performance compared to the normal 730. You can see that on the Reno 2 too. In everyday tasks, strong multitasking, photo and video editing, and ultimately gaming, the Reno2 never gets sluggish.

Oppo Reno 2 audio

The Oppo Reno 2's sound comes from a single loudspeaker located to the left of the USB port at the bottom edge. The sound is neither overdone nor overdriven. To the left of the USB-C socket, we have the good old headphone jack. The matching headphones are included, but they are not very good. They have hard earbuds that don't really fit firmly in the ear due to the lack of silicone fittings.

When telephoning, the headphones and speakers offer ordinary to good quality. Hands-free talking is effortless in the subway and on a bicycle, even though the headphones were in constant danger of falling out in the latter case.

Oppo Reno 2 camera

Another highlight of the Oppo Reno 2 is without a doubt the four main cameras and the shark fin selfie cam. Especially the main camera and the zoom camera provide very good results , while the wide-angle camera provides similarly good results only as a macro lens and for videos.

At the back of Oppo Reno 2 there are four cameras. The 48-megapixel camera has an optical image stabilizer and records images in twelve megapixels. You can increase the memory resolution of the JPGs to 48 megapixels; but the additional details don't justify the fourfold memory requirement. The photos of the main camera are rich in detail and contrast, sharp and hardly noisy.

The 13-megapixel telephoto camera is activated when you press the 2x or 5x button in the camera app. The 2x zoom is actually optical, the 5x zoom, on the other hand, is the "hybrid zoom" mentioned in the imprint, thus de facto a digital zoom with all its interpolation errors. If you stay in 2x mode, you'll get sharp, detailed photos with rich colors.

• A gallery of photos taken with the Reno 2

The least convincing is the 8-megapixel wide-angle camera. This delivers noisy, low-contrast and low-detail photos of wide motifs. However, thanks to its autofocus system, it is well suited for macro photography.

The 2-megapixel depth sensor is monochrome and works in portrait mode with the 48-megapixel camera. This has good object recognition and produces clean bokeh effects in almost all cases.

At night all cats are colorful

The Reno 2 can use night mode with all main cameras. Apparently, it's just a software feature that combines multiple photos of a sensor into a relatively sharp, brightened image. The results are astonishing at first, but not overwhelming.

Videos can be recorded by both the main and zoom cameras in 4K at 30 fps. The wide-angle camera only creates Full HD. All cameras use electronic image stabilization (EIS). If you switch it off, the image section of the recording will be slightly larger. The colors of the former and the latter are juicy and appealing, but the zoom camera unfortunately provides pale colors. You can switch between the cameras on the fly during recording.

Oppo Reno 2 battery

The battery life of the Oppo Reno 2 is very good.  During my test, the battery lasted two days and three hours, with the screen turned on for a total of seven hours. It was very nice to observe that the battery life is not bought with the compulsive closing of background apps. Notifications from Telegram, Threema or Hangouts always arrived immediately. Even eBay auctions have not escaped me with the Reno 2.

Oppo provides the Reno 2 with a quick charger. The proprietary VOOC-3 technology fully charges the smartphone's 4,000 mAh battery within 80 minutes. For a complete day of battery life, the device only needs 30 minutes to charge.

Oppo Reno 2 technical specifications